Happy 2024!

 So this post is about religion. If you don't want to know about what I believe or will be offended by the talk of Christ, punch out now. Come back when you need to know peace, this post will be here. 

I've been a Christian for as long as I can remember. Literally Sunday School at a small Baptist church in Hutchinsion, Kansas to moving to Missouri so dad could go to Southwest Baptist University and going to Mount Olive Baptist Church with our neighbors and even pastor lived across the alley for a while. Got baptized in the Pomme DeTerre river. It was cold. 

Always believed I was saved after that, said a prayer, did the baptism. Then life happens and things happen and you wonder if you're saved like you thought. You maybe get worried about it and say your prayer again just to be sure. You proceed about your life always knowing you've got that Ace card! No matter what, you're good! Look how good you are! You and your good deeds for all to see! If nothing else you can fake your way into salvation. And yes, you do need salvation. You do need repentance, and if you're asking, "who me?" Probably after you hear what I have to say or better yet have better men than I tell you themselves. 

I believe in the Jonathan Edwards' version of an angry God hanging by a thread of His Mercy. When you understand repentance, you understand what that means and you are driven to your knees by one question only, "Why Me, Lord?" That's it, your life is different from that point on. When you understand what repentance is and that it's not saying a prayer once when you were 9, that's when your life is different. You won't understand how, and your journey might take a very long time as mine has to reach this level of understanding. Thanks in large part to lots of time in the parking lots waiting on orders. 

One of my absolute favorite theologians is Dr. R.C. Sproul. His teaching genius is that he can relay incredibly complex topics in terms anyone can understand and give the reasons how and why while asking what you're thinking while you're thinking it. 

This is reformed theology by the best teacher in my lifetime. Dr. R.C. Sproul. 

This is far harsher. This is Dr. John MacArthur and on the universal question, "If God exists, why is there suffering!"

Dr. Voddie Baucham inspires me. This is his sermon entitled, "The Politically Incorrect Guide to God's War on the Wicked."

Paul Washer is the most intense pastor I've ever heard. He's nothing but the Gospel, it consumes him. Christ and nothing but Christ for him. Mr. Washer has many many incredibly powerful sermons and he does not play nice. If you are a fake Christian, trusting in something you may have silently muttered once and living like hell on earth, you are in for a reckoning if you listen to this sermon. He's famous for being very blunt and straightforward and this is the intensity of what the world needs right now for a true world wide repentance. 

I never know when my last day will be, neither will you. We don't know when that last heartbeat is coming through illness or accident or catastrophe. I never know when the last time it is to tell you I love you, so be prepared to hear it. When I'm gone, many decades from now I'm sure but I don't know, don't be sorry. Don't be sad. Know I'm with family that I know will be there. I'm with many amazing saints and theologians. I'm in a very good place and I hope you will find repentance. 

I did so many stupid things after my divorce. I lived it up and it wore me down. I felt empty still. I've documented for years life at my job and how it became a way of life. I've documented many many things about me that may be of help to someone someday. 

When you truly understand what Grace is, how unworthy we are of it, and how it's freely given. Then you will understand how this right here is where I'll be. This is prehaps the most uplifting sermon I've ever seen about how great it is to be a Christian. Dr. Derek Thomas goes into great detail on if there's dogs in Heaven. 

Look, if nothing else understand this parable from Jesus from the Gospel of Luke: 

The Rich Man and Lazarus

19 “There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. 20 At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores 21 and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.

22 “The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. 23 In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. 24 So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’

25 “But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. 26 And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’

27 “He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, 28 for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’

29 “Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’

30 “‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’

31 “He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”

I want to see you there and I love you so much, whoever is reading this. I don't want you to be in God's Wrath in unrepentant sin and yes it is God's Wrath. 

Let's see what 2024 brings, shall we?

The Death Dealer and 2023

 This will be my year end reflection. My final project of 2023 is The Death Dealer from Frank Frazetta. I'm putting the story of why I like it and why I painted it the way I have in the description so you don't have to reread it here. It marks an end of a turbulent year in the world and I am glad it's leaving. 

So 2023 started off as a real chance to put the pandemic behind us and get on with our normal lives again. I had applied for plenty of jobs and got a handful of interviews. Nothing much to speak of but I was doing ok driving and trying to find myself again without the base anymore. Without knowing it I had become institutionalized where I came to depend on the place. It became engrained in me and a way of life.

Getting over that was hard. It took a lot of time to get over and to even understand what was happening. I was driving every day and making the ends but not gaining anywhere. I was ok with that though, I had a comfortable life. Drive in the morning, hobby until bed. Enjoy being free. 

I went to the Christmas party and my shop wasn't my shop anymore. The office where I spent the majority of my adult working life was gone. Just space now, the decal room is now the office. The shop looks horrible now overall it's meh, not the same feeling. The whole vibe was different, uninviting, colder. The whole building was different but it kept me from being overly nostalgic about the place. Talking to all my buddies again was great and confirmed I made the right decision. 

Then August came around. An event that changed my life and turns out was pretty good now. It was a very rocky start though, I told the stories of how I was going to walk anytime I felt it wasn't working. Well those days are over, I feel invested in my job now. I enjoy it on a few levels too. 

I've been doing things the way I know how to do, deconstruct it, look at it from a few different angles, put it back together and get rid of the spare parts. 

That's what I've done and I've found ways to get the students interested in learning this tech to make a living at things. I mean it is school right? We all get educated in some capacity to wind up in the supply chain at some point from a producer to a consumer, we all share this in the workforce. The more education, the theory goes, the better place you have in the supply chain. 

So why not get the students learning how to make something with their own imagination and profit from it? I mean it's kind of my class and I'm in charge of teaching what I think needs to be taught within the bounds of school policy. So that gave me a mission to figure out how to do it for this second semester and keep it within school policy. 

Goodbye 2023, hello 2024, let's do better huh?

You can check out my painting video of The Death Dealer here on my channel, RetJetPainter. 

Rest In Peace Scotty

 From a kitten to dying peacefully, Scotty lived here his entire life and died this morning at 14.

He was a good boy, loved by his family and gave back more love than he needed.

My 2,800th post is in honor of Scotty. Rest in Peace Scotty.

Do pets go to Heaven?

There is a wonderful sermon by Derek Thomas from the Ligonier conference in which he addresses this.

https://youtu.be/qBgeJKyxhvA?si=I42yW9I0dpL_BDzc

One of the best I’ve heard and has so much love and grace in this sermon.

First Nine Weeks

 I'm on fall break. Last week was the end of the first nine weeks and we had our first parent-teacher conferences. I had a handful of people, mostly the kids that have parents that are involved in their kids' lives. I was told I'd rarely get to see a kid that needs it. 

So last weekend the world woke up on the doorstep of World War 3 as Hamas decided to attack Israel. It's a mess over there. A lot of YouTube channels are going full-blown PreTrib Millenial out there. All kinds of Bible prophecies are quoted. It's crazy. 

I'm not dogmatic about it. I tend to believe in a Partial Preterist view that says most of the prophecies in scripture were talking about the end of an age that was punctuated by the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple by the Romans. 

Who knows what will happen but it's scary. We've got two carrier groups over there now, rumors about Iran and if they will or won't enter the conflict. Give the Dimocrats the reigns and boom! Wars, rumors of wars, destruction, inflation, and the elites prosper as they drive our country into financing one war and threatening another. 

They won't be happy until they've wrecked every vestige of a once great country. 

Day One

 Yesterday was payday. That was really the start of an official day one for this new encore career. 

It put things into perspective. Clarified the pathway I suppose. I got things paid up and on the first it's pension day! So I'll be in great shape for the foreseeable future. Like did a Dave Ramsay projection and down to living on my pension alone and be comfortable. And that's with an extra $500 kicked into retirement every month and driving when I want to. Which is pretty nice. I can count on about 100 every time I go out.

How cool is that?

I kind of played a cool card with a few of the kids today. I impressed a few with my knowledge of anime. Then I topped that with Thing 2's foreign exchange experience and her love of anime too. It's only because I promised Thing 1 that I wouldn't play the My Oldest Daughter is a badass roadie and does set changes at festivals! She's loving her life as much as any 29 year old would!

How cool is that, that me, just this average guy trying to keep my head above water most of his life has been this amazingly blessed as I've documented over the course of these 20+ years. 

My First Week

 I've learned sometimes things are the same even though you're in a different career. I've had a lot of ridiculous professional development-style classes before school even started. I'm not a rah-rah-rah kind of guy. In fact I needed that valuable time and if I had been hired a week before I'd have been able to learn that in my printing lab all but four printers don't work or need serious maintenance. 

So...that's how this started. 

It also has had only one small blip so far, a mild trouble maker kept pushing the wrong button. A brief loud voice later and he chilled out and then transferred out. Since then this job has been a fun job almost. I mean other than the ridiculous stuff I don't care about. 

I've got two classes making their own board games. I don't know how to teach what the other teacher was teaching. He just had a course set up to teach via YouTube. While it is a necessary and usually really efficient way to learn the basics, he kept it up with more and more of them on worthless projects the kids would have to leave at school ultimately.

Nahhhh son, That's not what I do. I got a damn master's degree because I liked the creative aspects of commercials and was interested in how certain types of stimulus triggers a buying response. Basically I broke down complex situations into simple bites. 

Bite one. Get rid of old curriculum after I figured out old boy there was lazy. His courses were designed for him to stay behind the desk. So that had to go. I wanted to see their progress and challenge what they were doing in an engaging way. 

So for the start of the class we are doing tutorials until they catch onto how Blender works. Then after that I am going to guide them into making things they want to make and then teaching them how to make it into a .stl file and we will print it and they can paint it. They will have two things out of this course. 

    Uuuuummm...(a) maybe? They'll have tangible proof they can make something.

    (b) They will be reminded all year long they can use the skill they are learning now and turn it into a marketable skill, in which they can create and sell their own works. Because I'll remind them. I want them to be able to learn something in high school that is only limited by their creativity but can be lucrative for them if they really work at it. 

Bite C. The Game Design course is my favorite course really. Teach it twice. I ditched the old "sit behind the desk" curriculum and made up my own. We are treating this like a business in the early stages. We will have a working prototype by end of semester and then play test, balance, and prepare for market in the second semester. And perhaps, yes we might be able to market it. To be figured out at a later date. This was the trouble maker's class and I had a hard time getting through to anyone but a few. Then boom, the clouds parted, the angels sang, and we had a really good time ever since! Everyone has bought in!

Basically because of the same situation as the design class. We are in reality making templates and developing skills to use and edit those templates into a proud creation of their own that they can market and maybe make some extra money off of or maybe invent a new genre of game altogether! I want them to be prepared for the workforce and maybe have a bit more opportunity in their lives. 

The print lab is a wreck. I've got 4 reliable printers. So I spent my entire year's budget on five brand new printers like I have. They are so simple so we will be able to focus on making stuff instead of failed prints. And that's about it. I got some wash stations and some resin and isopropyl alcohol. Whole budget is gone now for the year. 

But we'll have really good printers now and hopefully if any money comes in or is donated to the program or something I want to add in ten more. As old as this equipment is in the lab now, the new resin printers can cut that time a dozen times over for one print. So we won't need as many as the lab has. And then I really don't have a marketing idea for this class other than the same in the other two classes. Learn the technology and find a niche you can market. It's not rocket surgery. 

So to boil it down, so far if the year keeps going like this, I might return for a second year.

I'll keep you informed. 

The Most Unexpected Voice of the Common Man

 If you haven't heard of Oliver Anthony, you're missing out on the biggest earthquake in modern music. Two weeks ago Mr. Anthony put out a song called "The Rich Men North of Richmond" and it touched such a chord with everyone that works hard for a living.

He had five million views in four days. As of right now he's at eleven days and twenty-six million views. He went from one of us to the voice of us. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqSA-SY5Hro

This is the link to the most brilliant masterpiece of the working man since the "Take This Job and Shove It!" explosion of the 70's blue-collar era. This work is crazy, everything is upside down now. 

The government gives illegals better care than our own veterans. And they invite more. They are bent on destroying everything they can as fast as they can because a Uniparty is in power. The GOP is just Dimocrat Lite. They agree with everything the other party wants so who cares anymore. 

Mr. Oliver Anthony, I salute you sir! I pray for you and for His blessings as you've been chosen to deliver a message to us. This song brings people together! If you don't believe me, I invite you to check out any one of a thousand reaction videos to this modern anthem. I haven't seen a bad one yet! 

Love you my Brother in Christ! 

An Encore Career

A funny thing happened last week. A fellow gig driver that works for the school told me to apply for an opening that they just posted. It's for an art teaching job. Yeah, I know. Art, weird right? Especially considering my degrees are in marketing.

Well, then she told me it was for teaching 3D printing, which I happen to be pretty good at!

I thought, what the heck, I applied for the job around 8:30ish that night. At 11:32 that night I got an email from the principal asking me to come to the school at 10 the next morning to interview. It was the best interview I think I've had and pretty much walked out with the job even though they had another candidate to interview. 

I showed them my printing and painting work and they were impressed. I took a tour with the interview team and saw my classroom and 3D printing laboratory! I have an actual lab now! Who can say that? Now you all know I've never been a teacher as my life has been pretty mapped out over this blog. 

I'm nervous, I'm excited, I'm terrified, I'm anxious to get started. 

Yeah, I thought I was going to have a marketing job by now. Turns out Bidenomics isn't working for me. I've applied for over 300 jobs and I've had a total of 7 interviews and 2 of them were for DHS, which everyone told me I'd hate and I knew that going in.

As a gig driver, I've had a lot of fun and it's really the perfect job for enjoying my freedom from my first career. I've enjoyed the heck out of it, met a lot of great people, and helped a lot of people with their groceries that otherwise might not have been able to easily get them or at all. The gig has kept me the peace I was really needing and it's hard to explain past that alone unless you lived it. 

Well, gas has gone up a LOT, groceries have gone up a LOT, and our gig pay has decreased at the same time. It was harder and harder for me to make ends meet comfortably. With me not driving 7 days a week my driver friends won't be competing as much for orders. There will be at least 5 extra orders per day that I'm not taking that they can have now. It'll make their days a bit easier and they can earn a bit more.

I didn't write about this until today because it became official just a little bit ago. I've finished most of my paperwork and need to sign things in the morning.

I'm going to be a high school teacher. 

The Perfect Concert Album

 You long-time readers know that once in a while I'll write about something perfect. Cannot be improved upon, even in the smallest way. I wrote about the perfect trilogy called 30 Perfect Rounds describing the "Irish" Micky Ward and Arturo "Thunder" Gatti fights. You could argue that the Ali-Frazier trilogy was perfect but for me and my time and what I witnessed in real-time, you cannot touch Ward-Gatti.

Well, I found the perfect concert album. I must confess I only roughly knew of this man and to my shame dismissed him as a Bro-Country hack. It was out of my own ignorance as I did not do my homework on him even though what I had heard was really really good. Later I learned he was not played on the radio, if he was it was usually by request and even then it is iffy. 

He reminds me of Metallica. They were the best band on the planet years before they got airplay which came with their very first video which was introduced in their fourth studio album, "...And Justice For All." When One was released they started to explode in popularity and started gaining mainstream attention. Then the Black album and the rest is history.

This man is that. He's the absolute best artist on the planet right now. He's a lyrical genius, he's Hemmingway in how he can turn a simple phrase and make it deep and esoteric. He's from Oklahoma and he's pure Red Dirt. He's the antidote to Bro-Country that has infested the radio for going on twenty years. Instead of lake-side hijinks, he writes things that I can easily relate to as I grew up in a town that was maybe a bit smaller than Oologah in the 80s. I understand where this man is coming from, lived it too with my friends. 

He writes about heartbreak, loss, fun, triumph, and everything in between those four points. His albums are sparse, mostly him and his guitar only with the occasional bass drum or straining fiddle. He started to get noticed while he was in the Navy when he started posting original songs while dressed in his work greens. Before long he was getting millions of streams and after that, the Navy wanted to have a chat with him. Legend says he earned an Honorable Discharge and went on tour. 

Zach Bryan is the best new Country artist in the world right now as I said, there are some that are every bit as good as him but have been around a few years and have really grown as artists like Cody Jinks, Ray Wylie Hubbard (a legend that's been around for a very long time), groups like Whiskey Myers, all of them have heart and speak to my like Mr. Bryan's music does but he's different at the same time. When you hear him, you'll understand what I mean.

In November of last year, he played a concert at Red Rocks. With a snow storm and freezing cold as the backdrop, Zach Bryan along with the fans created the absolute perfect concert. I've seen the Stones, Metallica, GnR in their prime, and Elton John on his last tour and many many more. This is better than all of that combined to me. This show is the epitome of how an artist loves the people and the love they give back to the artist while on stage that is just amplified and given back into an infinite loop. This show is a love story between the two and the dance that unfolds over an hour and a half. 

It's an experience and it isn't diminished in the least tiny bit if you're unfamiliar with his art. If anything once you're familiar with his songs then this show gets better. I honestly don't have the words to accurately describe this other than it is perfect. I don't even want to run down the tracklist, if you haven't experienced it, I ask you to get relaxed, find a place where you won't be disturbed for a while, and enjoy this absolute masterpiece. You can stream it on any service or watch a stitched-together concert with fan footage timed up to the actual concert audio on YouTube.

31 Years Ago

 June 15, 1992. My first day at the job that would turn into a 30-year journey. A job I thought would last maybe five years. I survived numerous layoffs, and I was at the bottom of the totem pole several times in seniority. My buddy that was hired a few months after me, was laid off. He got transferred to another job and after a few years wound up back where he started. He's still there! 

We went through a lot out there together! Now I'm here and he's loving life there! All is good!

In two days Thing 2 turns 27! Amazing! 

I can tell you that being a parent is one of the most terrible experiences in the world, and one of the best. Thing 2 is visiting South Korea, her BF is stationed there. She's planning on moving to Japan in roughly a year to get her grad degree while her BF is there for two years. 

Loving your kids is wonderful and hurtful at the same time. You appreciate the time you get to spend with them as adults and long for them when you can't see them and spend time with them. You sacrifice, pray, hope, and cross your fingers that they have a better life than you, and when they succeed you can't be prouder of them! You hope you raised them to where they can be independent, and self-sufficient, and have equipped them with some skills that will benefit them as an adult. 

You shouldn't be shocked when they utilize those skills in living their lives but still, sometimes your heart and soul hurt when you aren't able to spend time with them and bond as adults. I always wanted a road trip with them, just the three of us driving to something (doesn't matter what) but the point was just to show them something you three want to see and experience.

Dreams tend to fade over time, ambitions lose their drive, and life moves on. New people come into your life, beloved people can disappear, and you make what you can with what you have. Childhood memories will fade but for some reason, some don't. Some things stick with you. 

People, situations, good and bad, everything changes over time. You grow up and you begin the task of putting your childhood behind you. Age takes its toll and my girls will go through what I'm going through. They'll become reflective and look back and what I or any parent hopes are the good times the family went through together. The journey begins again and then again, over and over as time keeps it's pace. 

That journey all started on this day, 31 years ago!

A.I. And The Future

 So, this isn't really capable of happening now but I do believe the seeds are planted. Imagine a time with the right device, probably even as powerful as the iPhone of 2026 you can pull up an AI app and tell it to create three custom episodes for the evening's entertainment. 

Say you want three X-Files episodes. You want them to be with the third season look and feel. You want a two-part episode and one mythology episode. You'd like a couple of jokes, a snide remark, and Gillian Anderson to be prime Scully with a love scene. Maybe a brand new late-night genuine Columbo mystery while going to bed. 

The AI has it done in a few minutes and is ready by the time the popcorn is finished. 

The next night you want three episodes from the Star Trek universe advancing the storyline past the Deep Space Nine timeline. You want a new Enterprise from the next century. You want it to go into the fourth season of a series you had going last year. 

AI could be a very good thing. It could also be a very bad thing. I mean what happens when an industry like the Hollywood factory is suddenly irrelevant? Not just the actors but the writers, the directors, the editors. All the way to the guy that sweeps up the floors. Gone. 

The music industry is gone. 

YouTube itself could be a platform for this very thing. 

The Intellectual Property industry would explode. 

The sports industry could be iffy though. If you could have a custom league made and compete with other people in the AI league. Other people like me and you. We all get together and have a baseball/basketball/football/hockey/NASCAR team franchise each with agreed-upon parameters and watch live as other teams in our custom AI league compete on a nightly basis. Maybe you have an MMA league and the amount of exercise you do during the day is directly related to the evening's results. 

All are available to the power of AI.

The downside?

A lot of people are out of work. A lot of people will need a way to make a living. 

Right now AI can do a pizza commercial now that's funny but close to the feel of a commercial. A real pizza commercial from the 1980s. With the rate it is advancing now, I think the three to five-year range is believable. 

What then? What will society look like? This technology is going to be the best and worst thing to happen. 

So, I'm 53 Today

 I don't go telling everyone about when it is, in fact mostly I hide it. I'm just evaluating where I was a year ago and what progress, if any, I've come to. 

1. I was a student last year at this time, struggling through my final course. The capstone. The hardest assignment I've ever had and wanted to drop out of college about midway through. Even had the email typed out. But I contacted the professor and he really told me I was on the right track and was further along than I thought I was. Passed with an A but I was hating life. 

2. A job interview is hard to come by. I apply for jobs almost daily. I can't even fall into an interview right now. Well then there now, let me rephrase, I can get a job if I move. I don't want to move. So...

3. I'm a really good gig driver. With my retirement, my bills are paid. With gig money, I can live better. I listen to audiobooks. I don't know if I've covered this in a previous post or not, I'm not reviewing to find out. Right now my favorite is Expeditionary Force and Wandering Inn is tied for the top spot. Sadly the Expeditionary Force series has come to an end. I'm listening to Book 15 now, just started this morning. The next Wandering Inn book will be out later this month and I've got it preordered. 

4. While I live well, there's little margin for error right now. As long as I do what I'm doing, I'm good. I'm definitely happier. 

5. The Parable of the Mexican Fisherman. If I haven't posted it before or written about it, then go look it up. It's brilliant and I wrote about it in an assignment before. The gist is that I've achieved what I want to have a happy life. I've got a good balance going on right now. It'll also get easier over time and eventually I will get a good break and a new job will pop up. But for now, I'm good. 

What's next? I don't know. I'm just being still for now.